Iain Graham writes:

I have just bought (well, been given) a new mobile phone!  It, of course, cost me nothing, because we still haven't learnt in this industry, but it came with the now obligatory, shrink-wrapped, 140-page instruction manual on how to use it!!  A perfect cure for insomnia!  I read the opening page or two and it might as well have been written in Serbo-Croatian for all the sense it made to me!!  (I then realised it WAS written in Serbo-Croatian and so I turned to the correct language section) and it was just as incomprehensible!

Even worse, the manufacturers (who are too tight to pay for the printing in the name of 'going green') put the instruction manual on a CD!!  I stuck mine in the player in the car - nothing!  Not a damn word!  Funny, I thought, worked with the 'Conversational French in 30 minutes' course!

For goodness sake, most of us that buy a car for 30 grand never read the handbook until something goes wrong!!  Why are we expected to devote an entire summer holiday to reading a medium-sized boring novel about a device that costs nothing!?  When will manufacturers learn that if it needs War and Peace to get it working - THEY HAVE GOT IT WRONG!!

Whatever they tell you in the shop about mobile phones being idiot proof and 'intuitive' to operate is a lie. An out and out fabrication. It might be easy if you are the Dr Who gazing, never-had-a-girlfriend nerd who uses a Motorola 8000s (remember them?) as a doorstop, but for those of us that grew up in a world where the closest brush with technology was the bedside Goblin Teasmade (other brands are available) then it is a frightening and bewildering experience designed to make you feel a complete numpty!!

All I want to know is 'Where is the on button?'